Little (Big) Brother’s First 12 Hour Night Walk With The Big (Little) Sister
You can see the results of the other rogainers
(and ours, searching “Krēmerbērni”) here:
http://rogaining.lv/jaunumi/data/augsuplades/files/2019/nakts/web/results.htm
Honestly, it’s really weird to get up so late and stress-less for a competition. It’s habitual that you get ready for rogainings the night before with anxiety in your stomach, going to bed early and getting up early and sometimes crossing the country to get to start. But this time, the rogaining starts at 18:00, because it’s meant to be first 4h through light/twilight, then 7h through the woods in complete darkness, and then last hour is supposed to be light, so that you can find the finish line.
We depart from Riga to Jūrmala, to pick up my aunt (who is on a team with my mom) and then in the direction of Ventspils. Not quite sure where exactly we have to go, but we do know we have lunvh ordered at a pub on the way. Lunch, is brought 40minutes later than planned, which does make us late and now we’re rushing.
Finally, we’ve arrived in Liepene. We’ve missed out on the map dally, but we don’t think too much, so we move fast. This time my brother and I implement an unusual bag-packing strategy, my stuff goes into his bag and his into mine.
We came up with this strategy that morning, because it is much easier to walk up to a team partner and snack without stopping, than it is to stop and dig through you bag and then put everything back. I’d love an awards for this idea, it was a success and we’ll definitely do it again.
The route is chosen in a couple of minutes - I’m confident that I won’t know how to direct us through the top part of the map (the dunes) and the waters at the bottom of the map don’t scare me. Krišjānis agrees, but asks what we’re going to do in the middle of the night in the middle of a swamp. I tell him, that it doesn’t matter - we’ll find our way through the woods.
We’re taking off! The feeling is wonderful and we’re trotting onward. I haven’t been to a rogaining in quite a while, and it really is a nice warm feeling. Quickly we realize that the beginning of our route is similar to Ilmārs (team “Kreisā un Alnis brīvsolī”), who keeps accusing me of being a chatterbox, so we agree to stay together for the positive vibes. The first checkpoint is achieved successfully, but on our way to the second I start experiencing burning pain in my stomach. My brother, as we agreed, is staying with the other more experienced team as I’m barely walking behind them. I know that stopping before the next checkpoint is not an option as neither I nor my brother are following the map or our own location.
After “collecting” CP 34, I updater my brother on my physical wellbeing and told him that it’s not that bad – we shouldn’t force the very beginning and rather read into the map, to understand the relief of the course, paths and courses. He didn’t have any other choice than to agree, so, drastically slowing down, we move toward the detour. Krišjānis tells me in detail about floorball and I tell him of my running experience. When we get to the checkpoint, we realize that our friends are already far gone, but that doesn’t worry us at all.
The interesting conversations lead to minor orienteering mistakes, but in rogainings that isn’t too significant. Going through the first long stage, we carefully regard all the other orienteers and what they look like in action. The impending darkness scares us both a little, but it’s unavoidable.
We also meet our first woodland creatures and after drinking some coke, my stomach calms down a little. When we get to the yellow line (semi-overgrown trail) we come to the conclusion that it’s the best route during the day – you can see far and you can move through it quickly. We utilized it and without even noticing, we’re making our way to the other side of the map.
The musical breaks have begun, we’re singing folk songs one after the other. The mood is wonderful, everything is going as planned, taking the route by the trench was quite easy. You can see that the trail is broken is and for moment we could even see a women’s team making their way further on.
We take the trench to Checkpoint 65 as well and in two words – great choice. We also get a little wet going through a field, but we dry up quickly and it’s not that big of a deal.
The first long run has begun and we use the freeway to go a little faster. Timewise we’re half an hour in advance, so we start thinking of taking an extra checkpoint (CP-53). Not planned at all, but 5 extra points do sound good. We speak to some men running by, but they can’t help out, as it’s only their second competition, I laugh to myself and count my rogainings. 30? 40? Who even remembers?
This was a good run, CP 53 can be seen in the picture below
I deduce, that we’ll visit Checkpoint 53 only if we need a fill up break. How do we know? We look at our water stock to check. I pull a completely EMPTY water bottle out of my brother’s bag (yes, with my stomach pain I drank 1,5 liters). The necessity of a water fill up was not in question anymore. Now that I think of it, we really got lucky in checking the stock, otherwise we would’ve been left without anything.
The wet swamp turned out not to be that wet at all and the trench with the checkpoint in it turned out completely dry. We pranced through the field in delight, excited for a little break. We decide to stop for 10 minutes. Not more, not less, we’re not here to hang out and stuff our guts.
The extra checkpoint was already visible after visiting it we decide to go fill up. Krišjānis was hoping that someone would await us there, smiling and cup in hand, but I tell him not to get his hopes up. We lay the map down on the ground and fill up our water system ourselves, he immediately takes out his retainer and starts huffing down cereal bars. I feel sorry for him as he isn’t allowed to eat anything with his retainer in and he’s not allowed to take it out for longer than 2 hours a day, and after every meal his teeth have to be cleaned. In rogaining it’s very important to get enough energy from the food that you intake, so in the beginning I was a little worried how far we’d get if he can’t really eat.
During our break we receive a call from our dear mother, who unlike us, chose to upper side of the map for their route. She complains about the swamps and the checkpoints being hard to find. But we tell her that for us, on the lower side it’s the complete opposite, we’re doing great and she takes our advice. We put on our headlights, finish eating and quench our thirst. Excitedly we run toward the night, discussing how nice it would be to lay down in a warm bed right about now.
Walking by the pond, I orient us so
carefully, that we’re barely even moving forward. I’m afraid to make big
mistakes in the very beginning. We successfully find the trenches and offer our
company to a team of women walking by, but they respectfully decline.
We move on to the next checkpoint, taking
the trail by the trench with a sinking feeling of fear in our stomachs (at
least definitely in mine). It’s not my first time that I’m orienteering in the night, but this
time it felt so scary. The scale of the map wasn’t too small, in the
night details may appear insignificant and unnoticable, and I’m afraid to
miss something, and in addition to all that – there are woodland
animals clamoring around as well!
P.S. Precisely then I turned on my watch (it only goes 10h with GPS on and I really didn’t want to get stuck without it), so the line went from drawn to real.
CP 32 wasn’t planned either, but the team walking by convinced us that walking by the trench was a really good idea. I notice a nice way to get from CP 32 to CP 72, so we do visit the unplanned checkpoint in the end. All gods and well wishes are on our side tonight as we find all we need fairly quick. We kind of miss the seven, but with help from another team we find everything just fine.
We can chill out now. A 3km walk awaits us now, but out legs are still capable, my brothers hands are cold though even with winter gloves on. I suggest running for a little while and neither of really want to. Our conversations have quieted and we don’t see anyone around either, we move onward.
After climbing up a hill to get the valuable checkpoint, the mood is good again. The fear has subsided and my brother suggests calling mom to find out how she and her sister are doing on the course. We call and it turns out that they’re where we last filled up our water supply. We laugh that they’re halfway through the map, but we’re on the other side and almost ready to head home. Krišjānis categorically declines to go to CP 67, saying that it looks wet and difficult. I unwillingy agree and that was definitely the best choice as we later found out that there was water up to one’s waist there. Brother’s intuition was right once again and we finally started running (to warm up a little). His hands and feet were freezing and he soon started complaining of his feet aching, my legs were fine, but stopping didn’t seem as that bad of an idea.
With CP 27 we messed up a little. Krišjānis put his map in his bag before even finishing the longer leg of the course and orienteering was completely on my shoulders. Even though I was concentrating to the best of my abilities, I didn’t manage to find the trail where the control point was supposed to be. Neither of us wanted to continue searching so CP 27 was cancelled. CP 43 though was found successfully though, but afterwards we both were overcome with tiredness. I almost fell asleep coming onto the wider path, the monotone tempo of our journey makes me reconsider looking for more checkpoints. Orienteering seemed very difficult at the moment and I was already glad that we had successfully made it to the end of the map. Our distance travelled appeared to be just over 50km, which seemed like an acceptable number.
I painfully collect all my last brain cells to make it to the last two checkpoints. Krišjānis is barely alive and I have no idea on how to warm him. We do make it to the points, but after collecting the sixth, I felt as if I was with a vegetable by my side. He wasn’t talking nor running, he was clinging to my elbow and barely moving forward. What would a good sister do at a time like this? Of course, I start singing, but mainly I’m speaking, just to keep myself awake. I tell my brother about where we are, how great we’ll feel at the finish line and then I start going through the “Brainstorm” repertoire, to keep our tempo up. He smiled and laughed, but ultimately started weeping a bit.
We’ve arrived at the freeway, where I promised my brother that there wasn’t much left to go. And of course, I made a mistake making us take a large detour, mixing up paths just before the finish camp. Krišjānis looks a lot more alive and especially when we marked off the last station and posed for the finish photo. I’m very content with how he survived his first 12h walk, it was my third though.
We have some soup, take a cold shower and pick off our ticks. Then we mingle with other contestants and they look quite pleased with what they’ve achieved. This really was a rogaining for the books, even though we collected almost half of the CPs in the first 4 hours.
We both enjoyed it a lot in the end! Krišjānis says that he was really scared of the dark, but that’ll never hold us back from adventure. Our next competition together will be in 6 months, but until then he has to survive some floorball matches and I’ll have to power through some ultramarathons.
